


Alligator Blood

by orphan_account



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Misgendering, Non-Graphic Violence, Smoking, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 00:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4686200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crocodile at Loguetown, 24 years previous to canon. He meets some people and also fucks up once or twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alligator Blood

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be like, a nice fic about crocodile learning 2 transtrend and then i accidentally shoved some SAD HEADCANONS in here. plotting this involved a lot of yelling in a skype chat

There was something about him that kept his attention. It could’ve been his disregard of everything, his aura of owning the place, legs propped up with a chair as it reclines in the back of the pub.

He had no intention of even entering this damned place, filthy with the smell of cheap cigarettes and small-time outlaws plotting big-time schemes, but the sky’s dark rumbling threatened rain, and, already separated from his party, he had no intention of being caught outside and soaked through with his least favorite sensation.

Maybe he was thinking too allegorical about these things. Maybe it was his garish wardrobe, the bare chest, the brightly patterned shorts, the striking coat of - feathers? Even in something so dimly lit as here, he surely stuck out like a sore thumb.

Certainly, it couldn’t be the way he looked at him. In a dive like this, he could feel the eyes on him from everyone in the room, analyzing his image, the coat over his shoulders to hide his figure, all eyes on his chest to detect any trace of a bulge. The only reason he couldn’t see him looking is because his eyes were hidden behind tinted lenses.

Yet behind the lenses they must’ve made contact somehow, and he acknowledged his gaze with his feet: pushing off the chair, tapping the seat with his heel to invite him to sit.

Surely he only sat there because the alternative meant standing in the doorframe - or worse, blending in with this filth.

His first words to him weren’t words, per say, but laughter, a wide smile, mug of ale put to his lips and his tongue dipping into the bitter liquid.

“What brings you to this dump?” He says, laughing again.

He says nothing, takes a drag of his cigar.

His table mate laughs. “Not worth justifying with an answer, I get it! We’re all here for the same reason.”

He taps ashes off the edge of his cigar, lets it rest in his hand for now. “My captain wants to see off an old friend,” is all he says. Keeps things vague, lets his mind skim lightly over memory of His Captain, lets him avoid the anger boil up in him.

He laughs again. His smile is insincere, but he gets the impression that this isn’t out of the ordinary.

“Seems like he has a lot of old friends. I’m up here with one of my own, says zhe has fond memories, and that zhe feels obligated to see him one last time. I’ve never been to East Blue and I’m on vacation already, so I figured, what the hell!”

He writes off the unknown word as some quirk of an accent. He figures he might as well participate in the small talk; he’s stuck there until the rain . “Where do you range, then?”

He thinks he catches his smile waver for a second; his voice definitely seems less mirthful. He releases his drink on the table - loudly - and grunts, “Grand Line. Crew’s in North Blue.”

That ends the conversation, for a bit; both nurse their respective vices in somewhat awkward silence.

It’s he who speaks up again, his drink now down to dregs.

“What do you go by?” He asks.

“What?” He responds, not because he didn’t hear, but because it took him a second to process.

“What’s your name?” He repeats.

He pauses, looks him over. This feels like a test, though of what and why he has no idea.

“Crocodile,” he says.

He laughs, swinging his legs to lay on the table. Disgusting habit. “Crocodile! Strong animal, ruthless, feared by many. Did you pick that yourself?”

“Excuse me?” He says.

“One hell of a name, seems like the sort you’d choose rather than the sort you’re given.”

“That’s none of your business,” he says, teeth gritting and biting into his cigar.

He doesn’t laugh this time, just keeps that wide grin.

“Doflamingo,” he says, as if he was asked, “a gift from my mother.”

He can’t help saying something in retort; he still feels like he’s being tested, like any wrong word and the customers of this tavern will be on top of him, but he allows himself this one treat.

“She understood you, then, a man near so flamboyant as the animal.”

He laughs! He laughs quite a bit, raucous, cutting through the noise of the bar patrons.

“What! You think I’m a man!” He says, and he mimes wiping a tear from his eye.

He sits stoic, watching him overact, smoke rising up between his teeth.

Doflamingo shifts like lightning, gets up in his face, grin wide like the accusation was the funniest thing he’d heard all day.

“I’m about as much a man as you’re a girl, I wager.”

He’s torn between scooting back and getting this bird out of his personal space, and holding his ground to stave off an obvious intimidation tactic. His hesitation becomes the latter, and his face remains stoic, doesn’t betray the hot stone in his stomach from the accusation.

“What I am exactly doesn’t matter to you, but you can use ‘it’ for me,” it says, standing now, looking over him entirely. It’s pretty tall, taller than him, he thinks. “‘it’ like Sea Kings, ‘it’ like a Devil Fruit. It suits me.”

‘It’ was pretty pretentious. It paces a few steps, turns back to face him. When it speaks, it seems pretty sincere.

“Listen,” it says. “I think I’m getting off on the wrong foot. We have a lot in common. Come with me! Meet Iva! You’ll like zhir.”

It’s a reason to get out of this dump, he thinks, and though the windows were grimy he was somewhat certain the rain had come to a lull. Iva is a name he recognized, though he’s not sure it’s the same Iva - someone by that name was friends of His Captain, too, and visited on occasion, though he made himself scarce when this happened.

He makes motions to stand and it darts out to take his left hand. He pulls his hand back with a look of disgust, the instant of unwanted contact making his skin crawl.

It makes an exaggerated frown. “What, you don’t want to get out of here?”

He scowls. “Don’t touch me. I can follow just fine.”

 

-

 

The streets were utterly deserted, and Doflamingo didn’t seem to be in the mood to dally, keeping a quick pace - and, given the threatening rumble of the clouds above, Crocodile absolutely did not mind. Though it was no longer raining, water saturated the air, and even that enough was enough to set him on edge. Puddles splashed over expensive boots and in the distance he could hear some announcement - echoed off the walls to the point of incomprehension.

A turn, a twist, another turn and they found the crowd - what must have been the entire population of Loguetown, all crowded into the square, around a tall wooden scaffold atop which was what seemed like the star attraction.

A hush went over the crowd, and against his better wishes, he found himself stopping, captivated like the rest, when the man to be executed spoke. Not all the words were understood, not from that distance, but the meaning carried across.

“I’ll let you have it! Search for it! I left it all at that place!”

Lighting struck, washing out the world with both light and noise, reflecting bright white in the lenses of Doflamingo, who waited some paces away, arms crossed and looking impatient.

 

-

 

This was perhaps not the best time to meet Iva - seated on a balcony overlooking the plaza, zhe was an absolute mess: weeping openly, zhir makeup running, someone very flat in expression holding out tissues for zhir to use.

Zhe was barely coherent between zhir sobs. “It didn’t have to come to this!” Zhe wailed dramatically, blowing zhir nose. “He could have come to me!”

Doflamingo brought itself into zhir attention by doing a jump that could not have been possible, leaping across people and landing on the balcony rail in a crouch on the edge of zhir vision.

“Give it a rest, Iva!” It says, and cackled. “Roger’s dead, nothing you can do for him now.”

Zhe looks at it with watery eyes, lowers zhir tissue to reveal a pout. “I suppose you’re right…”

It gets comfortable on the rail, legs swinging out over the ground far below, craned back to look at zhir.

“Of course I’m right! No use crying over spilled ale, hah!”

Its head turned, seeming like its gaze turned to instead stare at Crocodile, who had been standing stiffly behind Iva and avoiding everyone around him.

“I found a friend, Iva,” is all it says, smile breaking out again.

Iva looks over him with those huge eyes; zhe smiles in a way that seem comical even without zhir running makeup.

“Oh! It’s so nice to meet you!” Zhe practically yells, hopping up from zhir seat to invade his personal space. “What is your name, your pronouns?”

“Wh-what?” Crocodile says, caught entirely off guard, needing to back away from zhir but afraid that any step will have him trip over zhir entire entourage of flamboyant folks.

“Your pronouns!” Zhe says. The utter flip in zhir attitude from mere moments is enough to make his head spin. “Like mine are zhe and zhir! ‘Zhe is so beautiful, flawless like zhir kingdom!’”

“I’m-” he chokes out, feeling something like disgust- “I’m a man-”

Zhe backs up to where Doflamingo perches, parroting his words. “‘I’m a man’ -- where’d you find him, Dofi! He’s just precious!”

“Some dive closer to south dock,” it drawls, “walked in like a lost puppy to get out of the rain. Lucky I found him and not anyone else!”

Zhe nods sagely, looks back at him. “Where’d you come from, honey? Are you a captain or are you in someone’s crew?”

The pet name was like nails on a chalkboard to him in a situation that was already stressing him out.

“I’m not your honey,” he burst out, “Don’t talk down to me! I’m Crocodile, don’t call me anything else-”

Iva looked taken aback at his reaction, frowned at zhir own words. “Oh no, I’m sorry!” Zhe says, sounding a bit more careful, “I didn’t mean you harm, it’s a force of habit!”

Zhe sits back down invites him to sit next to zhir. He doesn’t move.

“It’s nice to meet you, Crocodile,” zhe says, zhir voice a gentle, welcoming lilt. “Are you the same Crocodile in Whitebeard’s crew? How’s he holding up?”

The name was like a jolt to his heart; his feelings for His Captain were so conflicted as of late that he was avoiding spending time with his crew, avoiding even thinking about it. He keeps himself collected, but he doesn’t respond.

Zhe is frowning, as zhe speaks. “This must really hurt for him... he and Roger were really close.” Zhe looks out at the execution platform at the plaza below, at the crowds of people that had mostly dissipated.

“And with his last words… a lot of people know about One Piece, now. There’s going to be a lot of fighting, a lot of people are going to start looking for it now…”

“One Piece?” He asks.

“Roger’s treasure,” Iva says. “He found a huge secret, and hid it away!”

At the thought, zhir eyes started watering, and zhe grabbed more tissues from the two-toned person beside zhir, dabbing zhir face with them.

“Today was something big,” zhe says, perhaps more to zhirself than to Crocodile. “And to think… I got to witness it…!”

Zhe began weeping openly again, and he became distinctly more uncomfortable with the situation, turning to glance at the exit, and the throng of people significantly more somber than their outfits would suggest.

“Leaving already?” Zhe says, trying to calm zhir sobs. “You should be careful... tonight’s the first night of a new era….”

He scoffed as he left zhir hotel room. He didn’t need to be babied.

 

-

 

“Why aren’t we looking for the One Piece?”

The crew of the Moby Dick celebrated all things with too much alcohol, and mourning a funeral was no different. He was by far the most sober person on deck, with perhaps the exception of His Captain, held accusingly in his gaze.

Whitebeard laughed, in a sad sort of way. “It’s not worth it,” he says.

“Why not! We could easily get it!”

Crocodile shouldn’t be so heated about this, it’s not even something important to him - something else changed in him today, that he didn’t totally understand, something that made even looking up at His Captain burn white hot in him.

Whitebeard’s frown is hidden under his mustache. He says, “I couldn’t do anything with it that Roger couldn’t.”

“If we don’t get it, then someone else will!”

He looks down at him with sad eyes, looks at him like a child. Something’s heating up inside him, meeting that gaze, starting to turn to a boil.

“That someone’s going to be me!” He announces, before he can even think about it. His voice raises to a yell, silences everyone on deck. “I’m going to get the One Piece, even if you won’t!”

He looks so sad, like he has to punish a disobedient dog.

“My son,” he says, “I can’t let you throw your life away like that.”

My son. It’s a mockery. He does nothing but talk down to him. This isn’t a family. He feels heat behind his eyes, his fists balled hard, nails digging into his palm.

He doesn’t remember when he unsheathed his sword, a sabre held strong in his left.

“Like you think I can’t even do it!” he says, holding eye contact.

“I’ve had enough of this!” he says, looking up at someone who dared pretend to be his father.

“I’m not your child!” he says.

At last, he understands the boiling thing inside him. Years and years of chafe, of being babied, of ‘my son’ this and ‘my family’ that, of these false words holding him under everyone else, of the mocking eyes of everyone tearing apart his boy-shaped disguise.

“I’m going to win!” he says, and he aims for Whitebeard’s throat.

 

-

 

He tries to break his fall with his hand and he can’t comprehend when it misses, blood and splinters meeting him when he is tossed from the deck of the Moby Dick. The rain pours like buckets - he hates rain, he hates it, despises it with every fiber of his being - and he’s so dizzy it takes him a few tries to stand up. Something’s wrong with his face, feeling the white heat of pain pulsing across it, stinging harder with water droplets pounding on it, copper coating his entire mouth as he wheezes to breathe around the blood. He stumbles forward, trying to get off the docks, onto actual land, trying to shield his eyes enough to see but smearing more blood from - his hand - his hand that’s -

He stumbles again, can’t even make it off this deck properly. He was a joke. Whitebeard was right to mock him.

 

-

 

His breathing is still labored when he approaches something like consciousness. He tries to open his eyes but something thick is covering them. He tries to shift but his arm stops him; pain shoots up it like nothing he’d ever felt before, harsh enough that his limbs all felt weak.

People spoke around him, and in the fog clouding his mind he could not place the voices; he could hardly understand the words.

“Couldn’t just leave him there,”

“You did good,”

“Your stitching needs some work.”

“Take him with us when we leave. Seems like he’s had a rough night.”

“You’re a miracle worker…”

 

\---

 

Fourteen years later the now-knighted Sir Crocodile arrives in Mariejois to find that the new Shichibukai inductee was someone he recognized - someone found afterwards looking out on the city with hatred strong enough to be palpable in the atmosphere.

It’s he who speaks first, joining it on this balcony, one hand and one hook leaning on it.

“It’s been a while,” he says, awkwardly.

“Do I know you?” It snaps back, not even looking over at him. It was definitely the same person; hair cropped much shorter, but still that bright blonde, and absolutely nobody else would wear a pink feathered coat.

“We met,” he says, vaguely. “I was a child.”

Now it bothers to look at him, eyebrows scrunching under tinted lenses.

“I drank away my twenties, I don’t think I could recognize you even if I wanted.”

It pauses, looking harder.

“Did you get shorter?”

He grimaces, beginning to regret even talking to it.

“You introduced me to Iva.”

Its face lights up.

“Iva! Right! Shame what happened to zhir! Impel Down is a hell of a place.”

He frowns, takes a long drag of his cigar.

“Yeah,” he says. “A shame.”


End file.
